Staples calling all Specialty Paper Sellers, You Know Who You Are

Staples called this week. It got me to wondering about the world's largest office supply store and why they don't sell more of the Specialty Paper.

Paper.com is very good at selling Specialty Paper and we have about 40,000 types online.

Staples sells "Specialty Paper" too, about $300mm per year. However, Staples defines specialty paper a bit differently. They are referring to anything that is not white and 8 1/2 x 11 as specialty paper.

It is interesting to me that we all define specialty paper so differently. For Staples it represents about 300 papers. For Paper.com it represents about 40,000 papers.

In fact, for Paper.com the most bizarre and unusual papers are probably specialty papers. Edible papers. Waterproof papers. Earth friendly papers. Handmade papers. Therhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifmal papers. Carbonless papers. Paper made of plastic, like Tyvek papers or Yupo papers which are synthetic papers for watercolor projects.

How about textured papers? We have laid finish, linen finish, , rough, smooth and supersmooth. Exactly how smooth does a paper have to be to be supersmooth?

Or, we can consider inclusions. Paper is usually made by pulping cotton or wood into a pancake batter substance that is sprayed on a screen like you would find on a screen door, but finer. Water drips through the screen and the fibers of the wood or cotton line up and bond together naturally so that when its dry, its paper. During this process it is common to drop leaves, flowers, and other items into the paper during the drying process so that these items become part of the paper. Each sheet of paper is unique. Paper.com sells thousands of these unique, specialty papers, both by the sheet or by the pack.

Here is today's interesting specialty paper, Stone Cinnamon, an embossed paper: